Rick The Stick – a comic on the Interwebs

	I wasn’t sure what was going on here – how could going into the bathroom save my life?

Good morning!

For some reason over the last month or so, Wednesdays seem to be my favorite strip of the week. Whether it’s the writing which lends itself to some wacky images or whatever, I just seem to get a kick out of them.

Okay. So if you didn’t know – last October I decided I was way overweight and I wanted to see my three month old son grow up. I needed to do something about it. I was hitting the scales in the mid 270′s and I was uncomfortable with the way I looked and I was tired of it. Fast forward to March of this year and nothing had changed. I challenged a coworker to hit the scale and work our 4th “Biggest Loser Tampa” contest. I had one two of the previous three – the problem was I would bounce right back and at this point I was near my heaviest (276). The weeks went by and I meandered through the contest. My coworker ended up leaving the company, but he vowed to fight on and we would continue the contest.

A few weeks went by and he came into the office to visit. He hadn’t lost any weight, but I was down around 24 pounds. I offered him multiple chances to just leave the contest, no worries, no money, nothing. I was going to continue on to meet my goal of 222 by July 31st. He was determined not to let me beat him and he refused to bail – admirable, but at this point, I wasn’t losing. It was May and I already had a 20 plus pound advantage. To his credit, he’s lost over 20 pounds since that date.

But so have I.

As of last Friday, I was down 50.4 pounds in under 5 months. It feels good to have accomplished the feat, but I’m not done. I was 1.4 pounds short of my goal and my final weigh-in is around 48 hours away (depending on when you read this). So this morning I will have gotten up at 4:30am and headed over to the gym to play basketball at 5:30. Over the course of the next two days, I’ll have a very small Healthy Choice “entree” and a bag of chips (310 calories combined) for lunches and modest dinners. About a gallon of water each day and no bread or desserts. I’ll report next Monday how it goes – please wish me luck!

Over the last six weeks, I’ve share what I’ve done to lose the weight. To me, the most important thing has been doing what I wanted to do. I wanted to cut out bad foods. I wanted to reduce my portions. I wanted to lose the weight. This is the final installment, then I’ll shut up. I’m actually starting to weight train next Monday. And I’m going to do it the same way I lost the weight – the way I want to.

To recap our last six ‘Rick the Stick Diet’ posts:

Water – Drink plenty of it.
Eating – Smaller portions. Use your ‘sane brain’ to your advantage.
Motivation – Set a goal and find the mechanism that gets you going – and keeps you going.
Focus – Remember where you started, where you’re going and why your headed there.
Phases – Comfortably look to avoid foods that are bad for your diet.
– Reward yourself by eating the foods you love, just do it responsibly.

A distinct moment for me in the gym was when I was jogging on a treadmill between basketball games. I was jogging for about 15 minutes at a really good speed and the “calories burned” counter said 140-something calories. Now, I hate jogging – and I really hate jogging indoors. But all that work for less than 150 calories? Seriously??!! That’s the equivalent of a yogurt! A glass of orange juice!!

It dawned on me, that I was busting my butt for stupid choices I made while eating. Yogurt and orange juice are two examples of foods that are good for you – and not the type of food you need to worry about working off. But at that point I became VERY conscious of the amount of calories EVERYTHING I ate had. I was eating a small frozen desert every night. That little low calorie treat was – 140 calories. Once I put the two together, I realized that the 3 minutes of enjoying that dessert wasn’t worth the 15 minute effort it would take to work it off. Now during the final throws of the contest, I’ve gone a little overboard and weigh the options of everything that I eat and judge whether it’s worth it.

I’ve also promised myself that this weekend – which purposefully coincides with my son’s first birthday – that I am going to let loose. I am going to disgust myself as inspiration to hit the gym hard on Monday and start packing on muscle. The only difference is I’ll have to find a new motivation and something to keep me focused. I wish I could tie it into the strip. Something like doing 10 sit ups and 10 push ups for every comment on the comic every day… Any ideas?

Thanks for dropping by!
Ken

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